Intriguing Possibilities
I received an e-mail tonight from Change.Gov that announced the rollout of a new feature on the Change.Gov website. It is called a Citizen’s Briefing Book. Now, I’m not so naive as to believe that comments there are going to go very far, but I think the idea is really intriguing. As it stands right now, there are spam messages and there are too many comments to follow. Some are good, some are from folks who have had one too many beers (or joints, or whatever). But I think the idea is really interesting – it reminds me of the concept behind Wikipedia. Anyone can submit a comment and that comment gets voted up or down. After a period of time, the comments with the highest number of points are looked at and possibly added to the President’s briefing book. A number of refinements need to be made to the system (limited number of words for comments, restrictions on cross-posting come to mind) but the idea of soliciting comments from ordinary citizens and those ordinary citizens having the ability to vote on those ideas is different. Check it out!
It does have possibilities for good – as well as not so good. It’ll be interesting to see how it works out.
Yes, it does have possibilities for good and bad. I found it interesting to discover that once you vote on an issue, you cannot then vote on it again – the site must place a cookie on your computer preventing multiple votes. But another issue came up this afternoon when I received an e-mail from another poster who asked me to vote for his idea. That could be a real problem – what happens when a lobbying organization sends out a mass e-mail and asks for votes? Still, I think this is an interesting idea and one that the Republicans would not have come up with in a million years.
You might go to Change.gov and enter the term “homeland security” or “food security” and see the posts under those search terms – one referencing Michael Pollan’s “Farmer in Chief” essay has garnered over 1500 points already.
Good news!
You certainly do dig up the most interesting things online, Jeff! What a great concept—I look forward to checking it out.